When you ask Brooklyn-based artist and graphic novelist Laura Lee Gulledge about Charlottesville, her upbeat voice turns nostalgic. “Places like the IX building were full of my people. People who cared more about what you did than where you went to art school. People who helped me make art.” Creative community is the crux of […]
When you ask Brooklyn-based artist and graphic novelist Laura Lee Gulledge about Charlottesville, her upbeat voice turns nostalgic. “Places like the IX building were full of my people. People who cared more about what you did than where you went to art school. People who helped me make art.” Creative community is the crux of […]
In The Forage House, published by Red Hen Press, Tess Taylor explores the historical and individual toll of inheritance and how we are shaped by the legacies that come to represent our past and present realities. A descendant of Thomas Jefferson, Taylor was greatly affected when, in 1997, University of Virginia biologist Eugene Foster discovered a […]
This week we share our studio visit with local artist Andy Faith. Andy Faith’s artwork would fit perfectly in the setting of the Visionary Art Museum. It was a treat to meet someone whose personal sense of style so embodies the aesthetic of her art work. When we met, she wore a purple velvet cape […]
The Émilie Charmy retrospective currently on display at the Fralin Museum of Art is perplexing. Most of her paintings have a fierce inquisitive quality. Her application of paint gives expressive life to simple compositions. Single thick brush strokes resolve into a small elegant wrist or a delicate twist of hair. Although a few paintings, like “Nu […]
This week we’re sharing our write-up of a studio visit with local artist Nancy Bass. On a grassy knoll just south of town sits Historic Anchorage House, a landmark on the National Historic Register of Places. Built in 1825 by John White, this beautiful building now functions as the studio space of local artist Nancy […]
The Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative spent the winter months like a hibernating brick beast. The gallery doors were often locked during business hours, and weeks passed with its walls bare and white. The gallery, meeting place, and event space Charlottesville residents have come to rely on for raucous revels, avant-garde film screenings, sonic experiments, and […]
Ansel Adams’ photography is one of those things that’s easy to dismiss because we’ve seen so much of it reproduced in calendars, outsize posters, and the like. But after spending time with the actual photographs now on view at UVA’s Fralin Museum in “Ansel Adams: A Legacy” through October 13, I rediscovered the magic in […]
This summer, I’ve noticed art in unlikely places around town: local hospitals. McGuffey Art Center member artist Lindsey Oberg had new mixed media works on display at Martha Jefferson Hospital in June. “In the Country” by Richard Bednar and “Sightings,” a collection of photographs by Frank Feigert, have been featured in UVA Medical Center’s Main Hospital lobby […]
An Op-Ed style manifesto and general response to the McGuffey Summer Show Art in Charlottesville can be characterized by a sort of conservative tameness. Local artists combine quaint country craft with universally pleasing aesthetics to create an experience that is enjoyable but limited to a limbo world of perpetual charm. Limitless talent is channeled into oil, […]
The abstract and stylized tapestries of Klaus Anselm and Joan Griffin, currently on display at the McGuffey Art Center, are indisputably beautiful objects. They have clear pleasing palettes, unexpected bright intense colors, soft surfaces, and an odd but familiar resolution. Anselm’s tapestries are mostly geometric abstractions, overlapping squares, curves, and quadrilaterals that fill each composition. Griffin’s […]